


Guillotine

by Amikka



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 7x01, Canon Compliant, Carl's POV, Gen, Negan's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 03:12:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amikka/pseuds/Amikka
Summary: Set in 7x01: Punishment. Judge, jury and executioner stood before them and the decision was already made. The bat was a gavel, ready to fall. It was a pendulum. A guillotine. And when it fell, one of their group would find their hourglass running empty.





	Guillotine

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into the world of Archive of Our Own and I've always adored the characters of Carl Grimes and Negan. This is un-beta'd so all mistakes are my own (as per).

He could hear his heart pulsing in his ears. It should have been faster, he knew that, but it remained steady: the pace, _one-two one-two_ , somehow syncing with the swing of the gruesome baseball bat. From beneath the rim of his hat, Carl’s eye traced the arc of the barbed wire clad weapon when it rose to its peak before swinging back the opposite way in a cruel mimicry of a pendulum ticking down to their demise. 

Punishment. Judge, jury and executioner stood before them and the decision was already made. The bat was a gavel, ready to fall. It was a pendulum. A _guillotine_. And when it fell, one of their group would find their hourglass running empty. 

“Shit, what’s with all the gloomy faces?” Carl watched as Negan tilted back, hips thrust forwards and a shit-eating grin plastered along his features. “This is just like the good old days. Hell, Rick, you should get that. You do somethin’ shitty, you get punished. Action--” The weapon arched around, aiming at Maggie, even as Glenn tensed and shifted on his knees. “And consequence.”

As Lucille set her gaze on him, Carl tilted his chin up with evident defiance against the threat. He could practically hear the rapid uptick of his father’s heartbeat as panic clawed at him, but his own pulse continued in that one-two motion as Negan drew to a stop in front of him. 

Negan huffed as the icy-blue eye locked with his, before he clicked his tongue once. “Definitely your kid. You both give the same stink-eye, ‘cept you gotta work doubly hard, huh?” 

The glare intensified but, wisely, Carl kept his mouth shut. His dad hadn’t accepted it yet: the inevitability of what was about to happen. Just like with Hershel, there was no chance for heroics, no last minute save to prevent blood being spilled and greedily gulped down into the dirt. Pleading, fighting, crying, none of it would make a damn bit of difference. Silence was his only remaining weapon and he refused to hand it over in lieu of begging that would be put down with one solid blow to his skull anyway.

“Damn,” the looming figure breathed, before he hunkered down into a crouch across from the boy, Lucille nestled between his bent knees. “You know somethin’, kid? Every single one of these little bitches is gonna cry when Lucille gets started. Your dad? I bet he’s a real blubberer. Snot and saliva and shit. Disgusting, right?” 

He shifted a little, gaze roaming over Carl’s pale features for a moment as he considered. “Not so sure about you. You ever cried about anythin’? Shit, I bet even future serial killers get weepy.” Carl said nothing; only the slight twitch of a muscle in his jaw signalling that he had heard him. “You mute? Half-blind and mute. Damn, kid. If you were a dog, I’d have put you down by now. Maybe I still will.”

“Stop.” 

Keeping his eye locked on Negan, even as he heard his father’s cracking voice, Carl saw the cold expression settle over the Savior’s face. With a calculating slowness, he turned his head, levelling Rick with one firm look. “Was that an order?”

A collective shiver seemed to pass through the group whilst a similar bristle of anticipation rippled through the watching Saviors. It was time. They all knew it, and Rick had fired the starting pistol. 

Carl remained unmoving as Negan rose to his full intimidating height, Lucille hanging loyally by his side as he stepped back. “You do _not_ get to give orders anymore, Rick. That’s the part you’re. still. not. getting. You were the big dog, the head honcho, I get it. But that’s all over now. Now, you answer to me. And if you can’t handle that--” Long fingers coiled around Lucille’s handle as Negan planted his feet in front of Rick, raising her up until she was stretched towards the sky. “—Well, then I guess there ain’t nothin’ more to talk about.” 

Inevitable. Carl knew it, even if the others hadn’t seen it yet. One of them was going to die and Rick had successfully painted the bullseye on his own forehead. Carl knew that it was over; they’d lose a family member today. But all he could see as he saw the bat rise up was his mother, crying and offering far too much faith in a boy damaged beyond repair. 

A Pinocchio replicate whose only chance to be real was to be inhuman; to become a monster worse than the dead that roamed the Earth. 

“Kill me.” 

His last weapon was down. Laid out before his knees, fading away as he surrendered the last strength of will he had left for his father. Living without saving those he loved? That wasn’t living. It wasn’t even survival. It was only existing. Existing in the same way that plants and animals meandered through their lives or in how inanimate objects occupied space just because they happened to have been put there. 

Carl didn’t want to just exist. He wanted to live.

All eyes settled on the boy in the oversized Sheriff’s hat, fearless in the face of death. There were worse things in this world than breathing a final breath and growing cold and still. Every survivor knew that death was never the worst option. That was how you knew you were surviving.

Rick’s panicked breaths seemed to breach the void of silence; Michonne was poised to run and tackle Negan at any given second; and all eyes flicked between Carl and Negan, save for Abraham who had maintained his stalwart soldier’s pose, refusing to glance towards the child who was now the sole focus of their tormentor’s interest. 

“You have to kill someone. You said it. Kill me.” 

Negan blinked once, purposefully, his heel scraping along the pebbles as he pivoted to stare down the line of cowering pissants until he found the one kneeling tall. “You wanna die, kid?”

“No.”

“Sure?” Reclining back, dragging his feet away to widen the distance between him and Carl, he smirked. “’Cause I know Lucille’s a pretty gal and all, but most people find her a little rough. Too vicious for their tastes.” He bounced the bat against his shoulder once, before pointing at Carl. “You wanna save your daddy. Cute, and I respect that. Seems he’s raised you as a good little guard dog. That what happened before, you taking hits for him in the past? That what happened to your face?”

Carl blinked once; the miniscule movement belaying what he would never say. Because, accident or no, Carl had taken the bullet for his father. He had lost his eye for Rick’s lack of oversight when it came to Jessie and her family. He supposed that the whole ‘sins of the father’ thing had some substance after all. 

“You _did_ , didn’t you?” Chuckling deeply, Negan shook his head once, before letting out a low whistle as he stared down at Rick. “I don’t know whether to commend your parenting skills or fuck you the shit up for using your own kid as a shield.”

“That’s not what--”

“Ah, ah, ah. If I want the whole story, and I do, I’ll ask the one-eyed wonder. I figure he’ll at least be honest about it.” He turned, before swinging Lucille around to aim at one person after the other. “But you got it, kid. Let’s make this all fair and shit. Everyone’s at the table waiting to order. I gotta pick someone. So let’s do it your way. Eenie--”

The compass was spinning now. An arrow wildly caught in a brutal tornado as Negan strutted along the row of potential victims. It seemed to move faster – _meenie_ – and faster – _minie_ – until it was nothing but a blur – _mo_ – obscuring all else from view. 

_Catch a_ – and now his heartbeat was rising – _tiger_ – and the one-two – _by its_ – was becoming a thunderous drumbeat – _toe_ – in his ears until even the nursery rhyme was obscured. He wasn’t afraid of dying, but with the hand of fate dancing over his friends’ heads, he found himself wondering who he could deal with losing. 

It was twisted and wrong and he hated himself for putting a value on their lives. Of placing his father at the top of the list of people that he couldn’t lose; of looking at Michonne and finding it impossible to view a future without her; of glancing to Maggie and thinking about the baby growing in her belly in a stark comparison to Lori and Judith; of studying the faces around him and trying to convince himself that any potential after would be fine without one of them there. 

“—it.”

The curtain rises. The benediction of execution washed over numb ears and Carl stared at where the compass had stopped; Lucille naming Abraham as her next victim. He steeled himself, straightening his spine a little more as though mimicking Abraham’s resting military pose. He inhaled, slowly through the nose, and held it until it was over. The bat arched up and slammed down with all the fury of a man bent on revenge, tearing through hair and flesh, smashing bone inwards and forcing the shards down into brain matter. But once was not enough. Lucille was hungry and she devoured without mercy, lunging in again and again and again, until all the separate pieces of Abraham’s skull became a collective mass; a complex painting destroyed and eclipsed with one vicious splash of crimson. 

But Carl refused to look away. There was no morbid curiosity in what he was seeing. He had watched Walkers having their skulls caved in and, dead or alive, they were all cut from the same cloth. A skull was a skull was a skull and even bashed open, there was little distinction between Abraham’s and countless of the undead victims that he had had a hand in decimating. 

No, he watched because it was the last thing he could offer. Because whilst, one-by-one, his group flinched and looked away, Carl owed it to Abraham to witness his death as vividly as he had observed his life. It was the last thing he could offer; validation that the soldier had been there, right up until the moment when he wasn’t.

The funeral bell tolled and it should have been done. It should have, had everyone understood what Carl did; that it was inevitable. But Carl was a creation of the new world and the remnants of a previous existence could never quite let go of the idea that there was always another way. That, in some twisted synergy, good always wins out over evil.

Carl had learned the truth a long time ago. There was no good or evil: just people. 

Watching Glenn die was harder. Not because Abraham deserved to succumb to Lucille’s fury over him, but because it. was. done. The guillotine was only supposed to fall once when a body was still remaining on the platform; never twice in succession. It was harder because Glenn was never a soldier. He was strong and brave and kind and a far better man than any of those still remaining on their knees, but whilst Abraham had faced his death with a ‘fuck you’ attitude, Glenn had been terrified. And, in a split second, another widow and orphan were born, even whilst the latter had yet to open its eyes to the horror of their new world. 

Carl’s body shook. Fire burned through his core, forcing his nerve endings to twitch and jerk until he tried to control each tremor by clenching his hands atop his thighs. He wanted retribution. He knew the danger of allowing revenge to consume him, but it was difficult to force it back; to swallow down the bitter pill of seeing two of their group being beaten into the dirt. 

He had tried to picture a future without some of the faces: apparently, that had been a more literal interpretation than he had initially perceived.

Time seemed to skip. Even as he watched everything, he was unable to piece together the fragments of what had happened. Like the pieces of Glenn’s and Abraham’s skulls, time was splayed out and cracked along the floor, until their executions were replaying and the weeping of Maggie, Rosita and Sasha cast a soundtrack over the solemn scene. Dawn approached and then faded again as Carl lowered his gaze, reliving the details of Abraham’s scalp parting like the dead sea and Glenn’s eye bulging grotesquely from its socket. He stared blankly as Rick was dragged to the RV before vanishing from sight; an absence punctuated by Maggie’s hitching sobs as she bowed forwards with grief, pain and sickness.

“It won’t be much longer now. Then you can all go home, lesson learned. Let’s make this a one-off situation. Don’t wanna be repeating this shit again.”

Carl lifted his head as he saw Negan’s right-hand man – Simon, he recalled – parading in front of them casually. They were defeated and they all knew it. Outmanned and outgunned, down two people, and currently absent of their leader. Still, with a cold look, Carl watched as Simon glanced towards him, before the man chuckled and moved closer. 

“Still no tears? Negan’s right. You are a little serial killer.” Simon reached, flicking up the lip of Carl’s hat to better see his face. “Don’t worry. Your pops’ll be fine, provided he can keep his trap shut for more than ten seconds.”

Carl said nothing. He tilted his head a little to one side, staring unblinkingly and relishing a little when Simon was the first to draw back. He didn’t approach again and Carl allowed himself to savour the small victory that he had made a Savior retreat from him. It wasn’t enough. Nowhere near. But it was a start, and by the end of all of this, he intended to make every Savior regret ever having crossed them. 

Time sped up again. Rick returned, trembling and covered in blood that clearly did not belong to him. Carl could only guess at what horrors Negan had offered to his father, but the man was clearly unsatisfied. Still offended by the lingering defiance he could see in Rick’s eyes. He wanted them on their knees both literally and metaphorically, and Rick was refusing to come to heel. 

“Kid. Right here.” 

Teeth clenched together, resisting the urge to grind them into dust, Carl obeyed when Negan gestured for him to come closer with a firm tone. He rose slowly, taking his time and forcing Negan to wait; another small victory that he could store away and relish when faced with the onslaught of their loss.

“You a southpaw?” 

“Am I a what?” 

Negan’s grin was insufferable as he tucked Lucille under his arm, dragging out the long leather of a belt and smoothing it between his calloused palms. “Are you a lefty?” he drawled with a bemused look, taking in the sheer defiance on Carl’s face. Damn, it should have pissed him the hell off, but instead he found it intriguing. 

There was something about the kid; something that had saved him from being a sacrificial example to Rick and the others. It would have made sense to take out the child of the group. Nothing crippled folks more than watching a child die in front of them. He’d done it before, snipping the stem before the plant could flourish and grow to become an eventual threat. And Carl Grimes was, one-hundred percent, unequivocally, a threat. Hell, Negan could visualise the psychotic little shit relishing in skinning him alive one of these days. But, there was a chance that he could be broken; that he could be corralled and convinced to work alongside him. And if that happened, Negan could only see big and beautiful things in their future. 

Well, provided Rick pulled his goddamn head out of his goddamn ass and accepted the new world order.

Negan forced the youngest member of the group down onto the floor, hat abandoned and arm splayed out to one side. Feeling the gravel beneath his cheek, Carl blinked once, gaze sliding to his father’s shivering form before flicking towards the others. As he shifted his limb a little, the constricted belt rubbing uncomfortably along his skin, Carl braced himself. He had seen this before with Hershel, right before his leg was amputated. Clearly, missing one eye wasn’t enough: maybe the aim was to leave him with a missing pair of everything.

Rick’s cries echoed in the clearing around him, drowning out Carl’s insistence that he just go through with it. He’d survived losing his eye. He’d survived killing his mother. He’d survived so much pain and loss and despair that losing an arm seemed like a relatively mild turn of events in comparison. Besides, Merle had thrived without a hand. Maybe Carl could attach some kind of blade and allow irony to guide his aim when he speared the weapon through Negan’s smug face.

He would be alright. 

He always was.

The hatchet never fell; not quite elevated to the same level of destruction as Lucille. And yet, in a way, it had, and Rick was left panting and obeying like a beaten down dog, finally bowing down in all the ways that mattered. Defeated. It punctuated the silence heavier than Rick’s breathing and more firmly than the muted sobs of those still on their knees.

“See that, kid. It’s called mercy.”

Slowly, Carl’s eye turned in its socket, staring up at Negan even whilst he laid face-down in the dirt. As Negan straightened up, boots crunching along the stones as he rounded his splayed form, Carl swallowed once, before the scent of leather from the scuffed shoes invaded his nostrils. 

“Get up.” 

It irked him that he had no choice. That he was being ordered around like some errant pet and expected to perform any and all tricks asked of him. And yet, it was inevitable and to fight against inevitability was to attempt to hold back the tide: futile and pointless. 

Pushing himself up, his left arm numb from lack of circulation, Carl rose to his full height, glowering at the Savior. He didn’t consider reaching to remove the tourniquet. He didn’t even acknowledge that it was still there, nor the influx of pain that would flood his limb when sensation began to return to it. Negan didn’t deserve the satisfaction of seeing him show discomfort. Carl was a Grimes and the Grimes family were stubborn to the core. 

“Now, I think I’ve been mighty lenient with you folks. I mean, two guys for how many of mine?” His voice rose in volume at the end, causing several of the beaten group to cower down in response. And then the rage was gone and Negan chuckled again, tilting back in his usual cavalier manner. “And one of those wasn’t even my choice. You got your buddy Daryl to thank for that. So, I wanna hear a thank you. Nice and loud, like you’re speakin’ in class.”

Silence followed. Sasha’s gaze darted briefly towards Abraham’s body, shoulders rising and falling rapidly before fixing back on Negan. Maggie, despite her tears, had levelled a furious glare in the man’s direction and Michonne paid him no heed at all, too focused on his dangerous proximity to her boy. 

“Well, that didn’t sound like gratitude. That sounded like a shit-ton of nothing.” 

Lucille arched up casually, before her tip pointed towards Carl’s face. The teenager blinked once, close enough now to see the blood coating her surface and trickling along the barbs of the wire. He could even see the patchwork pieces of flesh; ripped free from Glenn’s skull and used as a coat to decorate Lucille’s sleek form. 

“Now,” Negan began, extending his arm a little more until Lucille kissed Carl’s cheek, leaving a red lipstick mark along his skin. “Unless I need to repeat myself for the third goddamn time, let’s try this again. Say thank you.”

Michonne broke first. She was fearless and she knew that they would have their chance for vengeance, but that day was not today. There had been too much death. Too much pain in such a small arena and she knew that would be the fuel for the fire in their bellies when they finally, finally, retaliated. But for now, she would protect those who remained, and Carl was top of her list of people to ensure returned home. Then Aaron followed, prompting a shuddering Eugene to crack out his own weak expression of gratitude. Soft voices rose up in tired dissonance, until even a newly christened widow openly thanked her husband’s killer. 

“Thank you,” Rick rasped afterwards, damp curls bobbing in front of his forehead as he practically kowtowed to the man, hoping to get him away from his son. “Th—Thank you. Thank you.”

A low chuckle rumbled from Negan’s throat as he observed just how beaten down the so-called fearless leader had become. People were simple when it came down to it. They either led or followed and it was the natural instinct to look to others to take charge. Hell, it was why, pre-cannibalistic-rotting-assholes, most folks would push their own mother into the crosshairs rather than take centre stage. 

“Atta boy,” he quipped, raising Lucille away until she was nestled loyally back against his shoulder. Slowly, purposefully, his gaze settled on Carl, taking a moment to just appreciate the icy look he was receiving. Damn, the kid had some serious man-sized balls on him. 

“Your turn, kid.”

“What?”

Negan’s lips coiled a little higher before he slowly dragged his tongue along his pearly whites. “What? Shit, Rick, you never teach your kid some goddamn manners? See, Carl, when a guy does you a favour, like making sure you can keep a-clapping whenever you feel the need to applaud whatever the shit it is you kids do nowadays, you thank him.” He leaned forward a little, relishing in the way Carl’s expression darkened at the gesture. “And well look at that. You got both arms. I can see ‘em there. So, I wanna hear it.”

Carl blinked: a slow, drawn out gesture before the full force of his glare was fixed on Negan again. It was all a power play, he knew that. And sometimes it was better to satiate the monster, to feed it, let it gorge itself until it became fat and bloated, to let its own gluttony guide it by the hand towards its demise. Only then, when it was a heaving mass, too consumed in its own lust for power to see beyond it, could it be gutted and hacked apart.

Negan was a monster waiting to be slit open. And like Michonne, Carl knew that that day wasn’t now. It probably wouldn’t be tomorrow. It might be weeks, months, years, but one day, it was going to happen; even if they weren’t the ones to do it.

“Thank you.”

Like the cat that caught the cream, Negan’s grin broadened and he hummed once, lowering Lucille to hang along the length of his leg. “You’re welcome,” he drawled, before he tilted his head to study the boy. “Besides, I’m itchin’ at the bit to see what you do next. You got me curious, kid, and that’s gonna keep you alive.” He stepped back, swinging the bat again leisurely as he added: “Well, probably.”

With a sharp whistle, he gestured for the Saviors to move out and Carl pivoted slightly where he stood to watch them leave. Wordlessly, he lowered himself back onto his knees to retrieve his hat, fingernails scraping along the coarse material as he dragged it closer. It had always made him stronger. When he wore it, he had always felt as brave as his dad, almost as though he could take on the world. 

Now, Carl wondered if Rick wanted it back. Glancing slowly across at his crumpled father, still shivering in the aftermath of the abuse, Carl exhaled and settled the hat in his lap. His arm was utterly devoid of feeling, but he saw no point in removing the belt just yet. It served as a reminder of what had nearly been and offered the stark realisation that the only reason he still had both arms was because Rick had surrendered. It was a bittersweet sentiment to find himself able to, as Negan said, keep ‘a-clapping’. 

His right hand splayed over the rim of the hat before moving to settle along the crown. As the car doors slammed and a mob of engines roared into life, Carl closed his eye, drumming his fingertips against the firm material.

 _One-two. One-two._

It was in time with his heartbeat; the swing of the murderous baseball bat; the steady saunter of Negan’s boots. Always the same rhythm. _One-two. One-two._ As continuous as the ebb and flow of a tide that it was futile to resist, no matter how much people tried.

 _One_ – Abraham’s scalp splitting open – _two_ – Glenn’s eye bulging from his socket – _One_ – smashing bone down into the dirt – _two_ – blood splattering out in a macabre fountain around them. 

It was the ticking of clock as the pendulum counted away the seconds to another death. It was the rise of a gavel – an axe, a hatchet, a baseball bat – waiting to plummet down and cast judgement on those who were still alive. It was the tiptoeing of a boy’s fingertips, mimicking the long road he had walked from the small footsteps of a child to the strides of a survivor. 

It was a guillotine and the shadow of the blade rested along his throat – _One-two. One-two_ – already marking him for death.


End file.
